Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education – Newshttp://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news
The Latest at the College of Education - Michigan State UniversityMon, 04 Dec 2017 20:05:28 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1MSU scholar lands $2.7M to improve undergraduate STEM educationhttp://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholar-lands-2-7m-to-improve-undergraduate-stem-education/
Mon, 04 Dec 2017 14:36:43 +0000http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/?p=14523Read More »]]>As more universities attempt to transform how they teach science and math, a Michigan State University researcher is focusing on broader changes across networks of campus to improve student learning.

Ann Austin has received three grants totaling $2.7 million from the National Science Foundation to study how reforms to institutional policies and practices, along with teaching and curriculum, can be leveraged to help undergraduates succeed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. Demand for STEM knowledge in today’s workplace continues growing.

“We need to think about issues around leadership, preparation of faculty to teach in new ways, how we evaluate teaching, and opportunities for faculty to collaborate,” said Austin, a professor of higher education and associate dean for research in the MSU College of Education. “There are multiple levers to advance change and we are seeing the use of national networks becoming a powerful force for institutional transformation.”

Austin will break new ground by exploring how universities improve STEM education when they work together. An example of these networks is the Association of American Universities’ Undergraduate STEM Initiative, which has led to improved learning outcomes, especially in the introductory STEM courses, at its member institutions, including MSU.

Austin and Susan Singer, provost of Rollins College and former director of the Division of Undergraduate Education at NSF, will use a four-year $1.8 million NSF grant to study six other networks representing different types of institutions and approaches to change.

One of the networks they’ll study is the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning, or CIRTL, a collection of 41 universities that focus on how they prepare STEM doctoral students to be exceptional instructors and researchers. Another, the Bay View Alliance, is a network of nine research universities in the U.S. and Canada that foster cultural change in STEM departments to improve teaching.

“We want to know how these networks work best, such as how they handle communication, how they balance commitment to the common goal with their own autonomy and how they strive to become sustainable,” said Austin.

With the second grant, Austin is working with three Bay View Alliance universities to focus on how they change one important component of STEM education: how teaching is evaluated and rewarded.

Austin will create case studies from the institutions—University of Massachusetts, Amherst; University of Colorado, Boulder; and University of Kansas—exploring how new approaches and a shared vision for using multiple sources of information (beyond student surveys) are tied to good teaching practices. // that are tied to teaching practices known to support student learning. The project is funded by a five-year, $690,000 grant.

Austin’s role as lead researcher for CIRTL also will continue as the network expands and focuses on preparing future STEM faculty members specifically for improving undergraduate education. MSU is one of three universities that founded this long-standing project in 2003. The latest grant includes $220,000 for Austin’s research, which will among other questions assess the long-range impact of participating in the project for the universities.

“An underlying principle guiding each of these projects is that improving teaching and learning in higher education involves changing organizational culture, policies and processes,” Austin said. “MSU is an institutional leader nationally in undertaking systemic changes to improve student learning, and I am excited that the research my colleagues and I are doing contributes to this growing body of knowledge.”

Henry (Rique) Campa, associate dean of the MSU Graduate School, oversees MSU’s participation in the CIRTL network and will also be conducting research funded by the new grant.

Greenhow (left) conducts a class with in-person and distance students.

The first study of Michigan State University’s pioneering robot-learning course shows that online students who use the innovative robots feel more engaged and connected to the instructor and students in the classroom.

Each robot has a mounted video screen that lets the remote user pan around the room to see and talk with participants in the class. The study, published in Online Learning, found that robot learning generally benefits remote students more than traditional videoconferencing, in which multiple students are displayed on a single screen.

The technology, Greenhow added, also has implications for telecommuters working remotely and students with disabilities or who are ill.

MSU’s College of Education started using robot learning in 2015. Greenhow and Benjamin Gleason, a former MSU doctoral student who is now a faculty member at Iowa State University, studied an educational technology doctoral course in which students participated in one of three ways: in-person, by robot and by traditional videoconferencing.

Courses that combine face-to-face and online learning, called hybrid or blended learning, are widely considered the most promising approach for increasing access to higher education and students’ learning outcomes. The number of blended-learning classrooms has increased dramatically in the past decade and could eventually make up 80 percent or more of all university classes, the study notes.

With traditional videoconferencing, Greenhow said, remote students generally can’t tell the instructor is looking at them and can get turned off from joining the discussion. “These students often feel like they’re interrupting, like they’re not fully participating in the class. And as an instructor, that’s like death—I can’t have that.”

The relatively new robots take remote learning to the next level. Instead of looking at a screen full of faces as she does with traditional videoconferencing, Greenhow said she can look a robot-learner in the eye—at least digitally.

“It was such a benefit to have people individually embodied in robot form—I can look right at you and talk to you,” she said.

To engage the robot from home, students just need to download free software onto their computer.

]]>MSU scholars aim to improve computer science in Michiganhttp://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholars-aim-to-improve-computer-science-in-michigan/
Wed, 08 Nov 2017 13:00:34 +0000http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/?p=14532Read More »]]>A team of scholars from the Michigan State University College of Education will develop new methods to enhance computer science education in schools.

The collaboration, called CT4EDU, is funded by a nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The CT4EDU team will work directly with a Michigan school district to implement curriculum changes, focusing on minority and/or economically disadvantaged students to encourage their learning of the growing computer science field.

The project will serve as a commitment to Computer Science for All (CSforAll), a nationwide, community-based initiative aimed at empowering educators and learners to engage and think critically with computational thinking skills. Yadav has been a core component of MSU’s efforts, making pledges on behalf of the college to enact changes that will impact curriculum and professional development at the university—and now directly in schools.

As our world is being continually shaped by technology, it is important for students to engage in computing ideas and practices so they can use those ideas and tools to solve complex problems, Yadav said.

Yadav made the 2017 MSU commitment at the CSforAll Consortium in October, joining more than 170 other organizations in promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and computer science education.

Collaboration and education

Aman Yadav

Yadav is working with Professor Emily Bouck (with expertise in special education), Associate Professor Christina Schwarz (science) and Assistant Professor Niral Shah (math) to help make the goals of the three-year project a reality.

They’ve partnered with the Oakland Intermediate School District, to implement computational thinking in elementary mathematics and science, which will include curriculum and professional development modifications. Oakland ISD serves 28 public school districts in addition to the county’s charter schools and non-public schools.

“We will work with teachers to co-design computational thinking activities and lessons to help students understand computational thinking concepts, such as algorithms and abstraction,” Yadav said. “This will allow students to understand computer science principles and expose them to practices that computer scientists engage in.”

In the first year of the project, the curriculum will be developed and modified based on what Yadav and the team learn from the schools on how computational thinking can be embedded into practice. Beginning in the summer of 2018, they will implement a professional development pilot for teachers to help them bring the new curriculum into the classroom. Additional teachers will join in 2019.

By 2020, they aim to have worked with 50 elementary school teachers to embed computational thinking in grades 3-5—ultimately benefiting more than 1,250 students.

“We want these students to be not just consumers of technology,” Yadav added, “but ultimately use the power of computing to create technological artifacts. That’s the shift.”

Throughout the project, Yadav will be updating the project’s website on the status of the project, and materials that other teachers can utilize in their own classrooms.

Redesigning education

MSU was part of the inaugural CSforAll effort announced by the White House in 2016. Yadav made a commitment to redesign the Introduction to Educational Technology course. He pledged the revision to focus on computational thinking to better prepare preservice teachers to embed those practices and concepts in their classrooms. More than a year later, computational thinking is now a key component of the class.

In addition, Yadav is currently working to launch a graduate certificate in K-12 computer science education in Fall 2018, to be offered in the college through the MAET program.

Additional resources & related news

Read more about Yadav’s work on computer science—and see tips for preparing to teach about it in the classroom.

Can an app help make teaching more equitable? Learn about an upcoming tool from Niral Shah.

Michigan State University has received a nearly $1.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to help more low-income and minority high school students enroll in college.

Led by MSU’s John A. Hannah University Distinguished Professor Barbara Schneider, the grant will allow the College Ambition Program (CAP) to expand on and improve how students are prepared for college and the workforce.

Created in 2011 and based on 15 years of research from Schneider, CAP is a Michigan high school-based model that combines multiple strategies, including course counseling, mentoring and financial aid advising, to help students achieve their postsecondary aspirations.

As part of the grant, CAP will introduce their already successful in-person initiatives in a new online platform, where students earn badges that are markers of performance, perseverance and achievement to set them up for success. This will further digitize and personalize the college preparatory experience, allowing students to take ownership over their learning.

In addition, the two-year grant will allow CAP to promote and provide more business and community internships. These on-site experiences—in locations such as robotics companies, vertical farming startups and state-of-the-art medical rehabilitation clinics—will increase student interest, knowledge and skills for the potential labor market opportunities in Michigan’s growing technological future.

“Through these experiences, students will develop competencies that can help them acquire out-of-school knowledge and skills that their more advantaged peers are likely to receive through their families and community social networks,” explained Schneider. To accomplish these aims, the CAP team utilizes trained science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) staff in dedicated centers in schools, as well as MSU graduate assistants and researchers.

The program focuses primarily on juniors and seniors in 11 Detroit- and Lansing-area high schools.

Many minority and underserved adolescents remain ill-equipped for the rapidly changing world they will enter. Students often have the drive and ambition to achieve their goals, but lack the opportunity and information to make them a reality. CAP was created to change the culture of schools serving these students to help better prepare them for the future.

Since CAP began, it has increased college enrollment by 8 percent each year among treatment schools compared to control schools.

This new phase of CAP intends to improve on this effect even further.

“If we want to help these students, we need to create a program that they feel is authentic and created for them specifically. Using student feedback, CAP mentors, business and university partners, we can give our students new and attainable paths to college and future labor markets,” said Schneider.

The College Ambition Program (CAP) has been functioning in Detroit- and Lansing-area high schools since 2011. Learn about how CAP began in “Visualize, Strategize, Go!”—a New Educator feature story from 2012.

]]>Juzwik honored for influential careerhttp://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/2017/juzwik-honored-for-influential-career/
Wed, 01 Nov 2017 12:00:26 +0000http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/?p=14664Read More »]]>Michigan State University Professor Mary Juzwik was recently honored with the 2017 Charles Carpenter Fries Award from the Michigan Council of Teachers of English (MCTE).

Juzwik, a faculty member in the College of Education whose research focuses on English education, was honored for her career, leadership and research in the field of English teaching.

“The criteria for this award could be summarized as one statement: This educator has been highly influential and has made a tremendous, positive impact,” said MCTE President Mitchell Nobis in an email. “That certainly sums up [Juzwik’s] work, and on behalf of Michigan’s literacy educators, I thank her for her service. This is a well-deserved award, to say the least!”

Juzwik was nominated by former students, who praised her teaching style and research. An author of numerous books, articles, essays, reviews and commentaries, she currently in her final year serving as co-editor of flagship research journal in her field, Research in the Teaching of English.

Juzwik was presented with the award at the annual MCTE fall conference on Oct. 20.

]]>MSU launches new effort to support informed education policyhttp://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-launches-new-effort-to-support-informed-education-policy/
Wed, 25 Oct 2017 16:26:51 +0000http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/?p=14552Read More »]]>Michigan State University has launched a new effort to improve K-12 education for students in the state and nation by delivering objective, timely research findings directly to decision makers.

The Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, or EPIC, is focused on building partnerships between researchers and state and school district leaders. EPIC researchers use pioneering data analysis to inform policies related to teacher quality, school turnaround and improvement, school choice and other key issues at stake in schools and communities.

“In keeping with MSU’s land-grant mission, EPIC was created as a new way for us to partner with policymakers across the state of Michigan and ultimately improve education for all kids,” said Joshua Cowen, founding director and associate professor in the MSU College of Education. “We especially hope to provide evidence to inform decisions that affect students in urban, rural and historically disadvantaged communities.”

Cowen is co-directing EPIC with Katharine Strunk, who joined the MSU faculty this fall as a professor of education policy and the inaugural Dr. Clifford E. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Education. Cowen and Strunk have raised more than $9 million in grant funding over the past decade to support their research on policies related to education for children across the country.

Strunk is considered one of the leading experts in the nation on teachers’ unions and collective bargaining agreements. She also brings considerable experience analyzing the impact of major education reforms including No Child Left Behind, portfolio management models, school turnaround and teacher evaluation support programs.

Strunk comes from University of Southern California, where she was an associate professor in the Rossier School of Education and the Sol Price School of Public Policy. While expanding her research in Michigan and at least four other states, she will continue to work closely with the Los Angeles Unified School District—the nation’s second largest—to analyze policies intended to help attract and retain high-quality teachers.

“EPIC offers an excellent opportunity to expand upon my previous research and bring it to scale at the state and national levels,” said Strunk.

Strunk said she was attracted to MSU by the outstanding reputation of faculty throughout the College of Education and across the university, who can lend multiple areas of expertise and research methods to the projects conducted by EPIC.

“We not only evaluate what works, but answer how, why and for whom, beginning with the neediest students,” Strunk said. “In addition, we know that the labor market, human capital and education quality are interrelated, and these relationships require holistic approaches to policy. The most valuable analysis integrates these strands into a larger whole and creates a big picture approach to the research. There’s a real opportunity to do that work here with EPIC and at MSU.”

About the Clifford Erickson Chair

W. Bruce Erickson created the Dr. Clifford E. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Education to honor his father, former provost at MSU and the first dean of the MSU College of Education.

The fund was set up as a planned gift in 2003, and has now been established as a named faculty position intended to support a recognized scholar in their field. Strunk’s appointment is in the Education Policy program within the Department of Educational Administration.

The first endowed faculty chair in the College of Education created by Bruce Erickson honors his mother Mildred B. Erickson. That position is held by a faculty member in Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education (HALE).

As a school administrator in Genesee County, Melody Strang had started to feel the effects of the Flint water crisis—concern for students close to her district, anger, the urge to help.

She was standing in the hallway of Erickson Hall sometime in winter 2016 when she suggested to one of her classmates in the Doctor of Educational Leadership program, Camela Diaz, that they focus their final project on the situation.

Soon after, they went to a town hall meeting together in Flint where local educators and health professionals were discussing how to respond to widespread lead poisoning. How would it affect the kids, and what about their teachers?

“It was then we decided we have to do something,” said Diaz, former principal and now assistant director for student learning in the Lansing School District. They recruited two other students from the Ed.D. program at Michigan State University who could bring different forms of expertise: special education leader Amanda Unger and high school counselor Sarah Van’t Hof.

Through a challenging collaborative process, they went on to create a five-lesson curricular unit—including the script for an original cartoon now in the works—designed for and by educators on the front lines addressing children’s social and emotional issues in Flint. They hope to complete four more units, each with its own “Flintoon” cartoon.

And their project is gaining national attention. The MSU team members, who graduated last spring, have been selected to receive the Dissertation in Practice of the Year Award from the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED).

“We are extremely proud of the work of this group,” said Susan Printy, associate professor emerita and co-advisor of the group. “It is a strong exemplar of the land-grant mission we embrace in the Ed.D. program.

“This Dissertation in Practice has the potential to make conditions better in schools throughout the Flint region and could be taken up as a strategy to help schools across the nation.”

“Like winning my Super Bowl”

The team will be recognized at a convening of CPED in Oakland, Calif. later this month. CPED is a selective organization representing more than 100 schools of education that offer education doctorates across the U.S., Canada and New Zealand. In most programs, the Dissertation in Practice, or DiP, is the culminating work for students, who are typically full-time working practitioners.

At Michigan State, Ed.D. students in the Department of Educational Administration are required to work in groups on projects that have potential to solve problems facing schools and communities. High-quality research is a major component.

Other projects have helped Michigan schools work on questions such as how to empower teachers or bring together community groups, while others look at bigger-picture research topics such as differences in opportunities to learn and consensus on education policies.

“Being part of this program at MSU, you feel like you are part of something so much bigger than yourself,” said Unger, who oversees special education for the West Shore Intermediate School District in the Ludington area. “The idea that we completed something that’s not going to sit on the shelf and that directly affects student learning is really exciting.”

Not to mention, she says being picked as the best DiP in the nation “is like winning my Super Bowl.”

“A different kind of process”

The Michigan State team’s dissertation is the first CPED award winner to use design-based methodologies.

“This is a very different kind of process,” said co-advisor and Assistant Professor Madeline Mavrogordato, who with Printy introduced the group to design thinking. “You don’t go in and say, ‘This is what you should do.’ You have to be very open.”

Each member of the group conducted a literature review to gain background knowledge on different aspects of lead exposure in children and schools. They also studied how schools respond to crises in their communities. Then they recruited a diverse group of nine educators and other professionals supporting children, including teachers and administrators from a Flint charter elementary school, a therapist and parent advocates at the county and university levels. They listened. What were they seeing in their practice? What did they need?

Unfortunately, they found the educators’ knowledge about the effects of lead was limited at that point to just one half-hour training session with a nurse.

Over each of three meetings with the Flint participants, feedback was recorded, transcribed and coded to uncover their biggest concerns—and to inform possible solutions. They presented prototypes and re-tooled them together until final decisions could be made.

“It was really important that we embraced what design thinking is about, and that was that it’s iterative. It’s designed to be messy,” said Van’t Hof, who coordinates counselors at Forest Hills Public Schools in Grand Rapids. Another challenge for all was negotiating roles and setting egos aside. “As educators, we are collaborators. We don’t operate in isolation, so mimicking that in our research was really incredible.”

It became clear that the Flint educators could benefit most from materials focused on helping students self-regulate behaviors and emotions that could be caused by high levels of lead exposure. They developed fact sheets, lesson plans and associated materials, assessment tools and models for communicating with parents.

Bringing concepts to life

“Odie,” a character expected to appear in the first “Flintoon.” The cartoons will help kids learn self-regulation skills that may be lacking due to the effects of lead exposure, or other forms of trauma and behavioral issues.

Along the way, Unger met cartoonist Tim Wheeler, who created Rocketoons as a cartoon-based way to facilitate classroom discussion on a range of topics. They came up with the idea to create one cartoon to kickstart learning for each of the five lessons, and the Flint educators loved it.

Now the first Flintoon is in production by Wheeler featuring a dragonfly who loses then regains control while traveling down a Flint area river. The group hopes to secure funding to move forward with the series. Each cartoon will cost $27,000.

Meanwhile, the first set of curricular materials are now in the hands of some Flint educators, and the group, along with Printy and Mavrogordato, hopes to pursue further research to improve and evaluate what they have created. This could include professional development for teachers.

“So many have wanted to help Flint in so many ways, but none of them seemed to look at what’s going to happen in the classroom. We wanted to help the teachers who are going to be held to the same expectations for academic achievement with these children,” said Diaz. “We just weren’t sure how to make that happen.”

In the process, all four of them say they feel transformed.

“The whole program really opened up our eyes to many things and made us better educators in the long run,” said Strang, who became superintendent of Genesee School District, a small district close to Flint, earlier this year. “It has made me a better advocate for students.”

“We did really well—extremely well,” said University Distinguished Professor Michael Leahy, director of the Office of Rehabilitation and Disability Studies. “We were able to finish the application in time because we have a group of faculty that know how to work with each other, we knew the criteria and were able to demonstrate how we were aligning with that.”

Michael Leahy

Both the doctoral and the master’s programs were accredited in July. The master’s program is accredited from 2017-21 in the new CACREP system. The doctoral program is accredited from 2017-19; after meeting several standards during the next two years, leaders anticipate the program will be accredited for another two years.

To meet these standards, both programs will enhance and modify already existing curriculum and practicum to extend the accreditation, something Leahy has “no question” they will earn.

The next two years

John Kosciulek

One of the biggest elements the programs will be working on is a new and formalized student assessment system.

“We need to develop a database system that keeps track of everything as students come in, throughout the program and then after graduation,” said John Kosciulek, professor and director of the doctoral program.

Assistant Professor Andrew Nay is leading the development of the system. “We’ll create custom databases to house this information, access it, report on it, make improvements and continue to develop the programs,” he added.

Andrew Nay

Existing elements of the program will be refined and improved to meet the new standards set by CACREP. Within the programs themselves, new content will be included in courses, some course titles will change and more documentation will appear in syllabi about the accreditation. At the doctoral level, a clinical counseling practicum will be added as a program requirement for all students.

“We’re looking into ideas to make content more relevant, things we can improve,” said Gloria Lee, associate professor and director of the master’s program. The master’s program had been accredited by the Council on Rehabilitation Education (CORE) for more than 40 years prior to merging with CACREP, the new accreditation body. “We’ll look into what we’ve been doing well, what we can emphasize more, what we can add to benefit the students’ training.”

Portability and marketability

Benefiting the students was key to the College of Education team pursuing accreditation. With a degree from MSU, and the accompanying accreditation, graduates are marketable and portable, able to find jobs across the country.

“At the master’s level, it clears the road toward counselor licensure, giving graduates immediate access in all state licensing exams. At the doctoral level, it opens up the entire academic job market for our graduates,” Leahy said. “There are no job restrictions. If we didn’t do the accreditation, there would be. Our decision to go forward on the accreditation was based almost solely on the benefit to our students.”

“It gives graduates the heart of the credentials they will need,” Kosciulek added.

Well-rounded training

Assistant Professor Connie Sung says one of the keys to success is diversity. Students come from all over the world to pursue studies at MSU with diverse and distinguished faculty who have a broad range of interests.

“Students get a well-rounded training here,” Sung said. “We focus not only on teaching, but research and engagement services with the community.”

That community connection has been core to the program since the 1980s, Leahy said.

Courses are often offered at night so that students can work part-time jobs (many of which faculty help students find). This way, they can take what they learn and apply it directly and immediately into their careers.

“It’s beneficial to the students and the curriculum,” Leahy explained. “We try to bring the community alive in our curriculum through guest speakers, community engagement and sponsoring students to go to conferences. We want to really contribute to the rehabilitation and disability landscape of our state. We’re an example of what a land-grant university is all about.”

]]>Grand Celebration: Alumni to be recognized for service, commitmenthttp://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/2017/grand-celebration-alumni-to-be-recognized-for-service-commitment/
Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:00:54 +0000http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/?p=14428Read More »]]>Every year during Homecoming celebrations, Michigan State University honors alumni for their extraordinary achievements and dedication to the university.

Three College of Education alumni are among the honorees that will be recognized at the MSU Alumni Grand Awards Gala on Oct. 19, 2017.

Alumni Service Award

This honor celebrates those who have dedicated themselves through service to the university or public sectors.

Donald W. Maine

Donald W. Maine, B.A. ’65 (Elementary Education) and M.A. ’71 (Reading Instruction), will be recognized for his impact to the West Michigan community. In addition to serving on several boards in the region, “Maine was critical in partnership with Grand Action in raising $40 million for the Secchia Center in Grand Rapids,” said MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon.

He was a 1999 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the MSU Alumni Association, and received an honorary doctorate in 2016 from the College of Human Medicine.

Maine served as chancellor and president of Davenport University from 1977-2000. He led the unification of three colleges across the state to become one university, moved the institution from offering only associate degree programs to a fully accredited university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees and introduced online education to Davenport.

Maine has a planned gift that will benefit the Colleges of Education and Human Medicine. The Donald W. Maine Endowed Graduate Fellowship Fund in Higher Education Administration will support a graduate fellowship in the Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education (HALE) program.

Margaret “Midge,“ B.A. ’72 (Education) and Michael Morrow, B.S. ’72 (Social Science), are also recipients of the award, celebrating their commitment to MSU and beyond. Midge served in and volunteered for the Detroit and Walled Lake communities as an educator for many years. Since graduating from MSU, Michael has served in a variety of alumni capacities: he was part of the College of Social Science Alumni and the MSU Alumni Association Board of Directors. He currently is on the College of Social Science’s Board of Visitors.

Together, the Morrows are active volunteers and dedicated philanthropists. They have donated and pledged more than $300,000 in support of campus initiatives that support students, such as the Social Science Scholars Charlie Waller Endowed Scholarship Fund, the 4-H Children’s Gardens and the Michael and Margaret Endowed Student Enrichment Fund in the College of Music.

Young Alumni Award

This recognition celebrates those who have distinguished themselves with a high level of accomplishment early in their careers.

Kaleb Thornhill

Kaleb Thornhill, M.S. ’09 (Kinesiology), was a celebrated part of the Spartan football team during his time at MSU. He was elected team captain in 2007 and was a four-time Academic All-Big Ten selection.

Thornhill is co-founder and executive director of operations for APEX Academy. The organization aims to assist under-resourced student-athletes to leverage characteristics and lessons learned in sports and apply them outside of the game. Co-created with a fellow MSU alumnus, APEX Academy provides young men with access to education, mentorship and leadership development opportunities.

He is also the director of player engagement for the Miami Dolphins. In this role, he challenges the athletes to be lifelong learners and to pursue continuous improvements in their family and social life, personal growth and career development during and beyond their career in the NFL.

Photos courtesy of University Advancement at Michigan State University.

]]>MSU ranks among best globally for educationhttp://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-ranks-among-best-globally-for-education/
Wed, 04 Oct 2017 14:03:39 +0000http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/?p=14515Read More »]]>Michigan State University’s education programs have been ranked among the best in the world.

Times Higher Education today ranked MSU #10 in its first-ever ranking of global institutions that offer education as a subject.

“The MSU College of Education is a world leader in research to improve the education and well-being of teachers and learners across the lifespan,” said Robert Floden, dean of the college. “We are proud of our high rankings, which show how highly our work is regarded.”

Dean Robert Floden

Times Higher Education’s rankings of university discipline areas were determined based on similar metrics as the London-based publication’s World University Rankings, including global surveys, citation counts and research grants. In addition to the education ranking, business and economics came at #34 and social sciences was #54.

The College of Education has a longstanding tradition of being honored for its programs. U.S. News & World Report has ranked the elementary and secondary graduate programs #1 in the nation for 23 consecutive years; the graduate program for rehabilitation counseling was tied for #1 ranking in the most recent edition in 2015. In 2017, the college was #9 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.